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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26940928">Finishing Each Other's Sentences</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindbending/pseuds/mindbending'>mindbending</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>First Kiss, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Post-War, Recovery, Sexual Humor, they vary in quality but never in subject, toph has never heard of a boundary, zukka writes love poems</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:01:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,770</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26940928</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindbending/pseuds/mindbending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>fire lilies are red<br/>your melancholy mood’s blue<br/>still I prefer you </em>
</p><p>After the war, Sokka starts writing poetry.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Minor or Background Relationship(s), Past One-Sided Toph Beifong/Sokka, Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>104</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>725</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Finishing Each Other's Sentences</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em> fire lilies are red<br/>
</em> <em> your melancholy mood’s blue<br/>
</em> <em> still I prefer you  </em></p><p>/</p><p>The war’s over. That feels like a lie some days, when Sokka wakes from imagined noises in the night, when a nervous vigilance learned in battle keeps him from sleeping in the first place. But Toph’s taken to planting flowers without permission, wreaking gleeful havoc on rich people’s boring ornamental gardens everywhere she goes. Aang’s actually followed through on his threat to make jewelry after defeating Ozai; he uses Air Nomad symbols and colors and honors his people with every lovingly crafted piece. Zuko‘s taken up dancing, though he insists on calling it “recreational improvised firebending, currently without the fire.”</p><p>The war’s over. Art helps that seem a little more true.</p><p>So no one thinks twice about it when Sokka takes up drawing, or when he hurls himself into every writing class he can find. He formally learns rhetoric, the art of structuring a persuasive speech and delivering it without forgetting half. He studies the great historians and travel writers of the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation, and he even winds up lecturing on the Southern Water Tribe’s oral history tradition. Finally, he formally enrolls that Ba Sing Se poetry school he barged into on accident, back during the war.</p><p>He lasts two weeks.</p><p>They’re the most confusing two weeks of his post-war life. Dutifully, Sokka memorizes the rules of each poetic form- the syllable counts, the rhythms and pauses, the necessary season signals and the forbidden rhymes- and he applies each rule like a lens to the classics of Earth Kingdom poetry. He churns out one analytical paper after another, listing all the ways in which the poems follow the rules and castigating the poets who break them-</p><p>“You’ve mistaken our subject for mathematics,” the headmistress says, managing to stare down her nose at him though he’s half a head taller, managing to sound somehow <em> pitying. </em> “There is no one formula here, and no correct answer.”</p><p>He churns out scrolls and scrolls of essays, seeking out the One True Interpretation of every poem, only to be told repeatedly that he’s missed the entire point. Apparently poetry isn’t about the rules at all, even though that’s all his teachers ever talk about. No, poetry’s about a certain something else. When he demands that someone explain what that “something” is, no one can tell him. </p><p>At last the class graduates to writing their own poems. The first assignment requires only a three-line haiku, a form that came so easily to Sokka a few months back. This should be a trivial assignment. He should be able to generate a library’s worth of haiku in his sleep.</p><p>But he remembers the blabbing about the "special something," too elusive and intimate to be codified. He stops thinking about syllables and tries to instead focus on…</p><p>On something special to him.</p><p>“Fire lilies are red,” he murmurs to himself, dipping his brush into the inkwell.</p><p>/</p><p>“So I got kicked out of poetry school. Again.”</p><p>“Why?” Katara says in alarm.</p><p>The old gang’s all pleasantly crowded around a single table in the <em> Jasmine Dragon, </em>sampling teas and swapping stories at their twice-yearly meet-up.</p><p>Sokka huffs into his oolong. “So there was this peer critique session. And I may or may not have gotten into a fistfight over the number of syllables in the word ‘fire.’”</p><p>The entire table explodes in protest.</p><p>“That’s ridiculous,” Katara exclaims.</p><p>“Yeah, everyone knows how many syllables are in ‘fire,’” says Aang.</p><p>“Two,” say Toph, Aang and Katara, right as Zuko says, “One!”</p><p>“Thank you,” Sokka says, gesturing at Zuko. “Clearly, the Fire Lord is the only one to be trusted here.”</p><p>Maybe it’s just the rosy hues of sunset, but it looks like Zuko <em> blushes. </em></p><p>“So,” Toph says, “what were you writing about?”</p><p>“Nothing important,” he quickly replies.</p><p>Sokka is definitely not looking at Zuko right now.</p><p>(He’s totally looking at Zuko right now, which is why he misses Toph’s mischievous little smile.)</p><p>/</p><p>Too soon, Zuko returns to Caldera, and Sokka leaves Ba Sing Se for the South Pole. Still, he keeps writing poetry.</p><p>/</p><p>The gang’s next meet-up gets relocated to the Fire Nation proper. To the palace, where Zuko’s too swamped in work to get away even for a week, and Sokka can’t help the stab of concern when he sees under-eye shadows darkening under that golden crown.</p><p>(And the stab of terror when he realizes, no, his poems don’t exaggerate his muse’s beauty in the slightest.)</p><p>He’s filled one journal after another- and they’re not <em>diaries, </em>Katara, even if they do contain all his innermost thoughts- with a mix of diplomatic notes and ideas for new inventions and poems. They’re love poems, though he’s not so gauche as to state that openly, or to declare by name <em>whom</em> he’s pining for. When the polar sun keeps him up long past his bedtime, when longing vaster than the ocean threatens to swallow him whole, he tries to boil the feeling down to a few lines. To fit it into carefully counted syllables, into a neat verse on a page that no one else will ever have to see.</p><p>(A downside of traveling the world: Sokka’s seen enough to really <em> get </em> how precarious Zuko’s position is, as a nineteen-year-old Fire Lord. And though he’s freed himself from Ozai, he’s still utterly bound to duty and to the wants of the Fire Nation. He can’t look at Sokka- no title, no bending, not a drop of Fire Nation blood- that way. He wouldn’t even think of it.)</p><p>Once they’re all gathered into one room, Zuko rises to personally make them tea, even though he must have a whole fleet of servants at his beck and call now. Sokka’s gaze follows him out of the room, entirely on accident...</p><p>Until Toph jabs him with her elbow, dragging him back to earth. “Written any poems recently?”</p><p>Sokka does <em> not </em> say yes, but he knows better than to lie to Toph. “Actually, I’ve taken up the single-stringed fiddle, did you know you can make strings out of...”</p><p>He mentally congratulates himself on a bullet well-dodged.</p><p>/</p><p>When Sokka opens the three metal locks on the secret compartment of his trunk that night, his current journal is missing.</p><p>Contrary to later reports, he does not <em> screech. </em>He simply raises a perfectly appropriate verbal alarm at top volume, startling several palace guards as he flies back down the stairs to where Katara and Aang are still feeding each other straw-plums. “Have you seen my journal?”</p><p>Aang glances up at him. “Toph tried getting me to read it to her-“</p><p>Sokka smacks his head into the door. Toph had a crush on him back during the war- Sokka didn’t know until Katara told him a year later, he’s not always the best at noticing these things. Her initial attraction faded quickly, but not her wicked gremlin curiosity about all his secrets.</p><p>“But,” Katara smoothly cuts in, because she and Aang are the sort of hopeless saps who finish each other’s sentences, “I told her it’s rude to look at people’s diaries.”</p><p>“It’s not a dia- ugh, never mind.” Sokka throws open the door to the next room, where Suki and Ty Lee are engaged in a decidedly un-martial sort of gymnastics. </p><p>“We told Toph to butt out,” Suki calls. “Same goes for you.”</p><p>He slams that door shut again and instantly ranks the top twenty people Toph might try next, both by how likely she’d be to ask for their help and by how catastrophic the fallout would be for Sokka. The same person tops both lists.</p><p>Ignoring the protests of a whole new squadron of guards, he rushes down the hall to Zuko’s private office. There’s light filtering through the seam of the door, and muffled voices that get clearer as Sokka approaches. Then there’s a sound he can’t recognize at first, an outrageous strangled peal of laughter.</p><p>Zuko’s laughing.</p><p>Sokka’s face lights up at the foreign sound, until Toph- also brimming with raucous merriment- exclaims, “Read that again!”</p><p>All of the sudden Sokka’s glee at <em> Zuko’s </em> glee freezes up and falls to the bottom of his stomach, cold and slimy as a squid-eel.</p><p>(He’s been working on his similes.)</p><p>Sokka's world is ending, because Zuko’s laughing at <em> him. </em></p><p>Overcoming his initial paralysis, Sokka thrusts open the door. Zuko’s head whips up, and he flings a blazing grin at him. “You‘ve got to hear this!”</p><p>“I really don’t-“</p><p>Shooting to his feet, one hand over his heart like he’s been newly hired by the Ember Island Players, Zuko begins orating.</p><p><em> “Shall I come for thee, with two simm’ring dao?<br/>
</em> <em> They’re hard yet lovely, pearly, tempered-hot…” </em></p><p>His recitation gets cut off by Toph’s giggle-snorting, as Sokka scowls at them both. “This isn’t funny!” he says.</p><p>“Of course it is,” Zuko sniggers, waving the journal at him. “This is top-notch comedic material right here. It looks like a formal sonnet, and it’s actually total <em> filth.” </em></p><p>Sokka looks at his muse- Fire Lord, paragon of honor, manifestation of all that is light and beautiful in this world- and tries not to wail. That poem is nothing but<em> pure, </em>a near-sacred memorial to one exquisite sparring session when Zuko whirled his perfect dual dao and forced Sokka to the ground. Besides the dust that got on all their clothes, what’s so dirty about that?</p><p>Then, Toph reaches for the journal with grabby hands, and Zuko passes it over before Sokka can intercept it. She thumbs through it, flips right to a page Sokka had marked by folding the corner and shoves it back at Zuko.</p><p>As he skims the page Zuko’s eyebrows shoot up, and Sokka braces for disaster.</p><p>
  <em> “There’s a boy who lives on a volcano.</em><br/>
<em> Red-hot lava may in all his veins flow.</em><br/>
<em>But when he erupts,</em><br/>
<em>through the rough aftershocks,</em><br/>
<em> I’d stay, couldn’t pay me to say no.”</em>
</p><p>Sokka wishes for Caldera’s volcano to kindly swallow him up right about now. He feels like he’s been run through with Zuko’s two <em> dao </em> swords, maybe after being stripped naked.</p><p>Oblivious to his mortification, Toph howls with laughter, and Zuko’s smirking too. Sokka can only splutter in response, because that poem was one of his most straightforward declarations of spiritual devotion. He’d penned it after Zuko had faced down one of Ozai’s old ministers in an Agni Kai and beaten her easily, after Sokka had held his shaking friend for half an hour, waiting for his mind to come back to his body. There’s nothing amusing about his feelings, or about the perfectly appropriate imagery of eruptions and aftershocks-</p><p>Oh.</p><p>“Where did you get these?” Zuko asks Toph.</p><p>“Snoozles wrote them,” she says, twisting around to beam at Sokka. “Your mind is dirty and <em> fabulous.” </em></p><p>What?</p><p>Sokka gawps at her as understanding dawns, so so slowly. Zuko didn’t <em>know</em> what he was looking at; Toph probably just stuck the book in his hands and commanded him to read it to her, like she’s really the Fire Lord giving orders around here. And really, <em>neither</em> of them know what they’re looking at. Sokka’s penchant for indirection’s saved him. The volcano limerick could seem dirty if you divorced it entirely from its context, and so too could the poem about <em>dao, </em>if you squinted really hard-</p><p>Really carefully, that is.</p><p>“You wrote these?” Zuko says, voice soft with admiration. </p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“That means you’re my new favorite poet.”</p><p>Sokka could write a hymn about Zuko’s smile right now.</p><p>“Yeah,” Toph interjects, “I gotta say, really liked how you emphasized that the <em> dao </em> are <em> broad </em>swords. It definitely...drove the point home.”</p><p>“Uh, yeah, because that was intentional innuendo. Definitely not about an actual pair of <em> dao </em> swords. I mean,” Sokka scoffs, “who even uses those?”</p><p>“And the whole wordplay with ‘come for me’-“</p><p>“Riiight,” Sokka says. “You know me, master of puns. It’s not just a plain old invitation to spar, because who’d be literal like that?”</p><p>“That’d be boring,” Toph cackles.</p><p>“And hey, Zuko, did you catch the double meaning of-“</p><p>He stops short, because Zuko’s flipped to near the very end of the book, and all the color’s fled from his face. Then, he hands the journal back with a tremor in his hands, and Sokka glances down at the page.</p><p><em> should I miss moonlight?<br/>
</em> <em> new radiance sparks my soul<br/>
</em> <em> midnight sun madness </em></p><p>“I’m sorry,” Zuko mutters after a painfully long pause.</p><p>Sokka’s stare flits up to Zuko, then back down. There’s still plausible deniability here, a scrap of an alternate interpretation to cling to, and he quickly forces a chuckle. “You know how it is. The polar winters. I mean summers. The sun’s really bright. And haiku’s all about that literal nature landscaping...stuff.”</p><p>His voice sounds hollow even to his own ears, and now Toph’s frowning in confusion.</p><p>Giving up on eloquence, Sokka clutches the book to his chest and flees.</p><p>/</p><p>“I owe you an apology,” Toph mumbles over breakfast the next morning. “I need to stop looking at metal locks as an invitation.”</p><p>Sokka sighs. “What happened after I left?”</p><p>“He said he was exhausted enough to sleep for once and he meant it. I wasn’t going to get between Sparky and rest.”</p><p>According to the servants, the Fire Lord is occupied with a full day of double-booked meetings. And though usually Zuko might find a few minutes to slip away and chat with them all, or at least with Sokka, today he doesn’t appear once.</p><p>/</p><p>“Sokka?”</p><p>It’s the next day, technically. Just past midnight. Sokka’s been staring at his little book of poems and seriously contemplating burning it. Upon hearing his name, he rises and peeks outside and finds…</p><p>Zuko, clutching a scroll to his chest.</p><p>“I wanted to show you a poem I wrote,” he blurts.</p><p>Sokka’s brain short-circuits for a second there, but then he steps aside and invites Zuko in with all the grace he can muster. As promised, Zuko heads to the desk and unrolls the scroll.</p><p>“This is embarrassing,” Zuko says.</p><p>“I’m aware,” replies Sokka.</p><p>“I mean for me.” He takes a deep breath before declaring, “I wrote this when I was sixteen and I never finished it, so. Consider yourself warned.”</p><p>Frowning, Sokka steps forward to inspect the poem. At first glance it’s freer than any verse he’s seen before, unconstrained by set rules or rhythms, almost like prose. But there is a certain flow that marks it as poetry, and a tortured delicacy to the wording that marks it as a <em>sixteen-year-old’s</em> poetry, with all the earnest absurdity that entails.</p><p>Sokka smiles as he reads the first lines, setting the scene for an ambitious drama- it’s a scene of war, a naval battle set in a polar sea. A little pompous, maybe, but he’ll allow the Fire Lord such liberties.</p><p>“It’s not about boats,” Zuko whispers. “Not really.”</p><p>Blinking, Sokka skims the entire thing again. Maybe there's something to how that ship's ram "penetrates" the enemy hull-</p><p>“It’s all wordplay,” Zuko continues, sounding far too shy. “Puns.”</p><p>And suddenly Sokka sees the text with new eyes.</p><p>
  <em> I missed, you saw. Come! </em>
</p><p>Sokka taps that line, which sounds so like <em>I missed you, Sokka</em>. “Is that…”</p><p>“A shameless way to sneak your name in? Yeah,” he chuckles, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “I was very proud of it.”</p><p>“You should be! And is that a pun on ‘sudden pull’ and “Southern Pole’?” </p><p>Zuko leans in and squints. “You know, it might have been?”</p><p>“And that enjambment, buddy.” Sokka’s eyes pop out as he stares at the most beautiful pun he’s ever laid eyes on:</p><p>
  <em>Thus the boom</em><br/>
<em> Rang, doubling back. <br/>
Would that he might come back too...</em>
</p><p>“Boomerang,” Sokka squeals. “You wrote poetry for Boomerang! This is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever done for me, I could kiss you right now!”</p><p>“...is that a figure of speech?”</p><p>He nearly backpedals, but Zuko’s looking at him with something awfully like hope.</p><p>Sokka inhales deeply, steeling himself. “...Did your sixteen-year-old self beat me to the whole plausibly deniable love poems shtick?”</p><p>Zuko’s look of hope slides into a smirk. “So what if I did?”</p><p>Sokka's decided to temporarily give up on poetry, and words. Instead, he pours all his considerable creative energies into kissing Zuko. </p><p>/</p><p>“I know how to finish that sentence you left off at,” Sokka murmurs the next morning. “‘Drag on, thrown.’ You know, like ‘Dragon Throne.’”</p><p>“That’s terrible,” Zuko says, snuggling up closer. “I’ll use it.”</p><p>(So they’re one of those couples who finish each other’s sentences now. Sokka couldn’t be smugger about it.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've finally run out of decent short Zukka ideas. I'm working on some Zukka longfics though... Kudos and comments are very much appreciated &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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